The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

It was ten on an early-September morning, the sun already
shining too bright and too hot through the cotton of Olive’s
shirt, the sweetgum leaves still a deep green and showing no
sign of turning. It felt different from the past few years, this
summer that didn’t seem to want to end, that was stretched full
and ripe past the beginning of the semester. Undergrads must
have been either dozing off in their midmorning classes or still
asleep in bed, because for once that harried air of chaos that
always coated the Stanford campus was missing. And Olive—
Olive had a lab for next year. Everything she’d worked toward
since fifteen, it was finally going to happen.
Life didn’t get much better than this.
She smiled, smelling the flower beds and humming a tune
under her breath as she and Adam walked quietly, side by side.
As they made their way across the quad, her fingers slid down
from his wrist and closed around his palm.